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Herbs to Know and Grow: Meet The Families

The herb garden is home to five major families of plants. While these families comprise literally thousands of species, a relatively small number are familiar as herbs. The five families are listed here with small sub lists of some of their more commonly known members.

Note that in the menthe or mint family, you’ll find not only all the mints, but the rosemary, lavender, oregano, sage and thyme!

1. The Parsley Family– includes chervil, fennel, parsley, dill, anise, cumin, coriander, caraway, fennel and carrot not to mention that most famous of plants, hemlock. This family is made up of plants with “umbrella” shaped flower heads.

2. The Mint Family – includes all the mints, pennyroyal, lavender, rosemary, sage, savory, marjoram, oregano, thyme and basil Look for the squared stem, opposing leaves and often wrinkly or hairy leaf type.

3. The Aster Family (also known as the Sunflower Family) includes daisy, thistle, calendula, dahlia, dandelion, chrysanthemums and zinnia. This family is recognizable by it’s daisy shaped flowers.

4 The Lily Family (recently this group has undergone a good deal of change, however, historically, this group included onion, garlic, asparagus, jonquil/daffodil, amaryllis The lily family has long then tapered leaves and a bulbous body stalk.

5. The Mustard Family includes cabbages, kale, mustard, broccoli, brussel sprouts, Chinese kale, rape seed, mustard seed, rutabaga, turnip, horseradish, wasabi.

A Few Important Things To Know About Herbs

Herbs have three different types of life cycles. They are evergreen, herbaceous or annual. The specifics of these life cycles and how to care for plants in each life cycle are given below.

Herbs grow in two phases each season: leaf producing phase and flower producing phase. Most culinary herbs are grown for their leaves or foliage. Once flower production begins, leaf production ceases. Theefore, in annuals and herbaceous varieties, harvesting the foliage consistently before the plant flowers can extend leaf production somewhat if care is taken to cut consistently.

Three types of herbs – Evergreens, Herbaceous and Annuals

EVERGREEN HERBS

The evergreen varieties of herb, for example, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, do not die back over the winter, but remain green year round. They will still require pruning to maximize their pruduction of new tender and flavorful growth, and should be pruned at least once a year.

HERBACEOUS HERBS

The herbaceous herbs include oregano, mints, tarragon, chives bee and lemon balm, winter savory and many others. These plants will die back to the ground at wintertime. There is no need to prune these plants with care, as they can be chopped right to the ground and will come back strong and healthy. In fact, for some, an annual mowing is an easy solution.

ANNUALS

Annuals, unlike evergreens and herbaceous herbs, do not live more than one season. While evergreens and herbaceous herbs are perennials, and grow for two years or longer, annuals produce flowers and then seeds before dieing off at the end of each growing season. Therefore, annuals require new plantings each spring.

Examples of annual herbs are cilantro, basil and chervil.

Planting the Herb Garden

There are three main ingredients to a healthy and successful herb garden sunlight, soil and pruning. It simply is not true that herbs will grow anywhere in any soil. Herbs require healthy well drained soil to grow, and poor soil or poor drainage lead to failed gardens.

Sunlight is a major factor in a successful herb garden. Full sun is a must if what you want are healthy full lush herbs. Shade or lack of sun leads to “leggy” or long stemmed plants with poor foliage and little flavor. To get the full lush foliage, fragrance and flavor of exceptional herbs you need plenty of sunlight.

Soil should be loose, have a good base of composted matter, leaves or mulch to create plenty of air space for the roots and nutrients for the growing plants. Herbs need well drained soil to avoid drowning and root rot.

Pruning is the final ingredient for your healthy herb garden. Follow the guidelines according to the plant type (evergreen, herbaceous or annual) above to ensure your plants remain strong and healthy throughout the growing season.

At the very least, at the end of each growing season all herbaceous plants should be cut back completely, evergreens should be well pruned to remove older non productive woody growth and annual seeds should be collected.

Selecting The Herbs to Start Your Garden

For a simple start, consider choosing from the following selection:

1. Basil – 3 to 6 plants, depending on your taste for it. For a constant supply of fresh leaves, plant consecutively over the growing season. For fresh basil and tomatoe salads you’ll need at least two cups of fresh leaves to serve 4 people.

2. Greek Oregano – this hardy easy to grow herbaceous seasoning will flavor almost everything. Plan on 2 plants to start if you enjoy Italian cooking.

3. Chives – 2 to 3 plants can be found in various flavors. Delicious in fresh salads, on potatoes and in a variety of dishes

4. Parsley – 4 to 6 plants, or try a few plants of cilantro as a variation

5. Rosemary – 1 to 2 plants will get your garden started and as they grow you’ll have plenty of this pungent evergreen each year. If you live where Rosemary cannot winter over, consider using a container, or plan to harvest and dry for the winter. Delicious in rosemary garlic roasted potatoes, or place a few springs inside poultry before roasting!

6. – Marjoram – 1 to 2 plants will provide plenty of this tasty herbaceous plant for your seasoning needs. Use the leave fresh and harvest the soft seed heads for winter flavoring.

7. Bay – 1 plant which can be taken indoors in winter if needed, will provide you with a bay tree. Use Bay leaves in soups. Savory stews, meat dishes and a host of other ways. Add a bay leaf to stored grains and flours to repel weevils

8. Mint – 1 plant at least, in a container so as not to take over the garden. Personally, I keep one peppermint and one spearmint, and use them both prolifically.

9. Dill – 2 to 4 plants. Like Basil, dill will need to be planted consecutively during the growing season to keep a fresh supply of leaves.

Some Tips To Success with Your Kitchen Herb Garden

1. Finding a sunny spot near the kitchen means you’ll use the herbs more often! Herb gardens far from the house or kitchen tend to be used much less often. Out of sight is out of mind, so keep it as close as you can to the kitchen door.

2. Consider using outdoor containers or raised beds. Many garden supply stores now carry old wine barrels cut in two, as well as extensive lines of prefabricated containers. Raised containers or beds mean you don’t have to get down on your hands and knees to work the garden.

3. While the idea of indoor herb gardens is quite popular, the practical truth is that unless you have plenty of indoor sunlight, your herbs simply won’t grow. A patio, porch or even a picnic table placed in the sun will serve perfectly to hold your kitchen herb garden containers.

4. Mix it up! While it is recommended that individual containers be used for each type of herb, if you’re working in an outdoor garden there’s no reason not to pretty things up: plant marigolds, zinnias, calendula or other clumping flowering plants around your borders. If you’re looking for protection from pests and animals, use wormwood and tansy as an outer border to the garden.

5. Take the time to enjoy your new herb garden! Nothing perks up a dull moment like a whiff of fresh basil or rosemary crushed between the fingers. Feeling mentally sluggish? Basil is known as the “mind clearing herb” and it’s surprising how just inhaling a few deep breaths of this pungent plant can bring your mental faculties back on line!

6. If you’re new to cooking with fresh herbs, start slowly. A great chef recommends you begin with one herb at a time: choose the herb and use it in your cooking in different ways until you get familiar with its qualities. Then try another. If you try to use too many different herbs at once you’ll end up with a muddle of flavors and it will be harder to learn the individual tastes and complimentary characteristics of different herbs.

7. Have fun! After all, the heart and soul of great food is its ability to bring pleasure and joy to the table! If you’re getting frustrated or overwhelmed by your kitchen herb garden project, take a break, find a spot in the sunshine for yourself and sip a cool drink. There is no point in stressing out over your kitchen herb garden!

Mulch is a layer of material spread on top of the soil to conserve soil moisture, discourage the growth of weeds, help prevent erosion and prevent large fluctuations in soil temperature. In other words, mulch modifies the soil micro-climate around your growing plants.

Ideally, mulch is light and permeable enough to allow water and air to pass through, yet dense enough to inhibit or eliminate the growth of weeds.

Mulches may be organic (usually plant material), mineral (crushed stone or gravel), or synthetic (plastics and geotextiles). Understanding their differences will help you choose the best mulch for your situation. Generally speaking, organic and mineral mulches cool the soil while synthetic mulches warm it up.

Any biodegradable material can be used as an organic mulch. Some of the most easily attainable materials include shredded or chipped bark, shredded leaves, hay, straw, and peat moss.

Avoid using whole leaves unless you mix them with straw or some other light material as they tend to mat down and get soggy. They can actually prevent water and air from reaching the soil beneath.

Grass clippings are an excellent choice of mulching material. They’re so small they start breaking down and enriching the soil almost immediately. If you do use grass clippings, be sure they don’t have pesticide residue on them. Many lawn treatments contain herbicides that kill broadleaf plants, including those that you may be trying to grow in your garden. And of course, if you’re mulching a vegetable garden you don’t want to be adding poisonous chemicals to it.

You may be fortunate enough to live near a source of industrial by-products that are useful for mulching. Some ideas are sawdust or shavings from sawmills, spent hops from breweries, or composted manure from mushroom growers.

Careful with the sawdust. It’s deficient in nitrogen so you might want to mix it with some compost. Also, softwood sawdust is acidic, so you don’t want to use it too close to plants that prefer a neutral or alkaline soil.

Advantages of mulching:

Mulched plant roots are not subjected to extreme temperatures. Unmulched roots get hot and dry in the summer and can be damaged by the heaving of soil during sudden frosts and thaws in winter.

Organic mulches and some mineral mulches contain nutrients that gradually wash down into the soil and fertilize the plant roots.

Weeding and hoeing the garden are practically eliminated when you mulch! The few weeds that manage to poke up through the mulch are easily nipped out, and there’s no need to cultivate because the mulch keeps the soil loose.

Mulch protects the soil from the drying action of the sun and wind, and protects it from erosion from wind and hard rain. Mulched plants can often endure a long dry spell with hardly any watering.

Mulch protects vegetables such as squash, cucumber, unstaked tomatoes or strawberries that lie on the ground when they’re ripe. The mulch keeps them clean and dry, preventing rot and mildew. Likewise, low growing flowers will not be splashed with mud in a mulched flower bed.

When not to mulch:

Seedlings planted in very moist soil should not be mulched until they are well established, as the higher soil moisture can encourage damping-off, a fungal infection that is usually fatal.

If the soil is waterlogged from spring rains, let it dry out a bit before mulching perennials to avoid crown rot, another fungal infection. It is best to leave an open circle a few inches in diameter around the base of each plant for air circulation.

Don’t mulch a low-lying, wet soil.

There’s too much to learn about mulching to fit it all into one article, but I hope you can see that mulching has great benefits for your garden and for you.

Your plants will benefit by having their roots protected from heat and dryness in the summer and from frost heaving in the winter, your soil will stay loose and friable, weeding will disappear off your chore list and you’ll save water too!

If you always wanted to get into scrapbooking but didn’t know where to start, then this information is for you. Scrapbooking is the art of presenting your photos and memories in ’scrapbooks’, hence the term scrapbooking. If you have a lot of photos and mementos that have been shoved into drawers, and find it difficult to retrieve them in an orderly manner, then scrapbooking is definitely for you.

Over the past few decades we used photo albums for our photos, but they became boring, everyone’s photo albums all looked the same. And, more often then not, most of these photos never actually made it into a photo album, they were simply left in the developer’s packet.

How much nicer would it be to pull out a gorgeous display of your prized memories to show off to visitors? Scrapbooking can solve this problem for you, for a very inexpensive price. And no, you don’t have to buy a large scrapbooking kit to get started, you can simply buy bits and pieces as you progress with your scrapbook. Your only initial expense is the blank scrapbook itself, though you could use a plain school scrapbook but be warned that the acid in the paper will damage your photos.

There is no set way to organize your scrapbook, some people prefer to organize in chronological order and some don’t, it doesn’t really matter, as long as you’re happy with the overall result. You can use your scrapbook to tell a story or to simply display some of your favorite things, souvenirs or mementos from a special time or place. You can even layout your scrapbook based on a favorite theme, like Christmas, Easter or birthdays.

When you first head off to your local craft store you may become a little overwhelmed by the vast amount of scrapbooking products available. Don’t fret, many stores have starter kits that will probably suit your needs in the beginning. You can also ask for help from the staff, they will be able to show you many different methods and supplies to help get you started.

Another option with scrapbooking supplies is to make your own. You don’t need to buy brand new materials that you are only going to cut up anyway. Have a look around the house (especially in the kid’s rooms) and see what you can come up with. Usually the bottom two drawers in the kitchen heed the best bits and pieces, you’ll be surprised by what you find in there.

The 8 1/2 x 11 inch scrapbook is a popular choice these days as it allows you to include printouts from a standard home printer. You can also download hundreds of different page designs and layouts from the Internet. This is a great option if you don’t have time to get to the craft store. Another thing to consider is getting a scrapbook with removable pages, so you can rearrange your pages and add to the scrapbook later.

Hop onto the craft wagon and finally get your photos organized, and looking much more attractive than a boring old photo album. Start scrapbooking today.